LLM Group 5 Criminal Law and Criminal Administration Penal Laws 2015 Question Paper with Solutions

(a) Offence of Nuisance

Section 268 of the Indian Penal Code, now section 270 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, provides that a person is guilty of a public nuisance who does any act, or is guilty of an illegal omission, which causes any common injury, danger or annoyance to the public or to the people in general who dwell or occupy property in the vicinity, or which must necessarily cause injury, obstruction, danger or annoyance to persons who may have occasion to use any public right. The section then states the rule which decides most contested cases: a common nuisance is not excused on the ground that it causes some convenience or advantage.

Public and private nuisance. A private nuisance is a tort, actionable by the individual whose enjoyment of land is interfered with, and is not an offence at all. A public nuisance is a crime, because the injury is to the public or a section of it; no complainant need show special damage, though a person who has suffered special damage may also sue.

Municipal Council, Ratlam v. Vardhichand, (1980) 4 SCC 162, is the leading case. Residents complained of open drains, effluent from a nearby alcohol plant and the absence of sanitation, and the Magistrate ordered the municipality to construct drains. The municipality pleaded lack of funds. Krishna Iyer J. held that a statutory body cannot plead financial inability to justify a public nuisance affecting the health of the community and that section 133 is a potent instrument of social justice.

(b) Protection of witness

Section 19 of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 exists because a prosecution of a syndicate fails when the witnesses do not come, and it works in four sub-sections.

Section 19(1) permits the proceedings to be held in camera if the Special Court so desires, notwithstanding anything in the Code of Criminal Procedure, whose general rule is that a criminal court sits in open court.

Section 19(2) permits the Special Court, on the application of a witness, on the application of the Public Prosecutor, or on its own motion, to take such measures as it deems fit for keeping the identity and address of any witness secret. The suo motu power is the operative feature, because a frightened witness rarely applies.

(c) Waging war against government

Section 121 of the Indian Penal Code, now section 147 of the Sanhita, punishes whoever wages war against the Government of India, or attempts to wage such war, or abets the waging of such war, with death, or imprisonment for life, and fine. An illustration is attached: a person who joins an insurrection against the Government of India commits the offence.

The meaning. The expression is not defined and its content is judicial. It is not a military expression: no army, uniform or declaration is required, and the number of participants, the quality of the weapons and the prospect of success are immaterial. What distinguishes it from rioting is the object: an assembly whose purpose is general and public, directed at the Government as such, wages war; an assembly whose purpose is private riots, however violent. And the offence is complete on an attempt.

(d) Adulteration of drugs

The Penal Code created three graded offences, now sections 276 to 278 of the Sanhita.

Section 274, now 276, punishes whoever adulterates any drug or medical preparation in such a manner as to lessen its efficacy, change its operation or make it noxious, intending or knowing it likely that it will be sold or used for a medicinal purpose as if unadulterated, with imprisonment up to one year, or fine up to five thousand rupees, or both. Section 275, now 277, punishes a person who, knowing a drug to have been so adulterated, sells it, offers or exposes it for sale, or issues it from a dispensary as unadulterated, with six months or five thousand rupees or both. Section 276, now 278, punishes knowingly selling a drug as a different drug or preparation, on the same scale.

The scheme separates the adulterator, the knowing seller and the substituter, and all three require intention or knowledge.

(e) 'Beggar' under Juvenile Justice Act

The Act defines begging, not the beggar. Section 2(b) of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 defines begging as (i) soliciting or receiving alms in a public place, or entering into any private premises for that purpose, whether under any pretence; and (ii) exposing or exhibiting, with the object of obtaining or extorting alms, any sore, wound, injury, deformity or disease, whether of himself, of another person or of an animal. The second limb is aimed at the adult who displays an injury, or a child's injury, to extract money.

The consequence for the child. He is a victim, not an offender. The Juvenile Justice (Amendment) Act, 2006 inserted clause (ia) into section 2(d), so that a child "who is found begging, or who is either a street child or a working child" is a child in need of care and protection, dealt with by the Child Welfare Committee under section 29 and never by the Board.

Conclusion. The five notes turn on five separate points: public nuisance on the rule that common injury is not excused by convenience, and on the Magistrate's preventive order as the remedy that actually works; protection of witnesses on the Special Court's power under section 19(2) to order anonymity on its own motion; waging war on the object of the assembly rather than its scale, and on the absence of any Indian offence of treason; adulteration of drugs on the fact that the Penal Code's one year maximum has driven every serious prosecution into section 27 of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940; and the beggar on the Act defining begging rather than the beggar and treating the child as a person to be protected while punishing the adult who uses him.